PPP Session 5 - Self Branding Introduction

In today's PPP session, we began talking about the self branding project that we will be doing alongside our other modules.

Firstly we looked at the idea of the Kray twins, and then how their identity was copied by The Stone Twins, who were trying to create their own name for themselves.

We then looked at Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh, who have used some very 'out there' techniques to brand themselves, including naked pictures of themselves to 'bare all' and allude to the idea that they are very open and honest.

Penny also talked about her own practice, Studio theGirls, and discussed how herself and her fellow colleague and designer branded themselves in order to get their name out there.

One thing I found really interesting is when we looked at Christopher Doyle's self branding from 2008 - a profile of himself he sent out in order to apply for jobs/use it as a CV. I absolutely loved this idea and thought it was really effective. The way Christopher had designed this made himself really memorable and came across as an interesting guy.

We then looked at branding ourselves, and we wrote our ideas down on big sheets of paper. We looked at 4 things:

1) word association
2) purpose/focus
3) audience
4) tone of voice

I asked my friends and other people who knew me to give me words that best described myself, some of which being sassy, funny, realistic, honest and approachable. I think I need to be careful which words I use to portray myself as I do not want to come off in a negative way!

Ideally I want my tone of voice to be fun, friendly and lighthearted, as I think this suits my personality well.

I struggled with the audience and purpose sections and did not manage to record any ideas down. I think these areas definitely need a bit more thought before I can develop my ideas. This will help refine exactly how I want to come across within my self branding.